Duking it out at the Altar!

It's funny what you find while Google searching for former classmates.

I was attempting to track down a friend of mine from Seminary, Daniel Sladek. While we were attending Westminter together, he somehow ended up traveling to the UK for a Free Church of Scotland summer internship, where he met a nice gal Scottish gal he would later marry. He's been hard to keep track of ever since. He did manage to write during his time at Free Church College a thesis on N.T. Wright's exegesis of the 'zdk language in the OT. The last I heard from him, he was ministering in some capacity (I think) at a Free Church congregation in the London area. But I can't recall communicating with him (much, if at all!) since I read his thesis, which must have been 5 years ago (at least!).

Enter Google!

The first Google search link I found and clicked on was your basic bulletin insert of the previously-mentioned London congregation, asking the congregation to pray for the Sladeks as he accepted a call to a church in Skye (Scotland). That was April 2006....so I figure I'm getting warmer.

I then tried to Google search the church name listed on the previous link, but it turned up nothing. I then went to the Free Church website, and they didn't have any church listed by that name. Dead end! So I decided to return back to my original search.

Now back at my initial search tab, I go to the next link of the original search and notice the following Google search blurb, "....American-born preacher Daniel Sladek, looked down from the pulpit..." So I'm thinking to myself that I've found him....

...And then I read for a little more context and discovered the title of the actual article in which Dan's name appeared: Love rivals in punch-up at the altar and the subtitle: Jilted husband thumps wife's lover in Kirk.

[Leave to the Scottish to give you a real attention-grabbing headline! The only words that came to my mind were, "Scratch my back with a hacksaw!"]

Here's a fuller quote from the article:

The minister at the Kirk, American-born preacher Daniel Sladek, looked down from the pulpit in shock as his precentor (choirmaster) was beaten up.

He said last night: "We certainly deplore the incident and lament what happened. It was certainly a shock to myself and the congregation - a most unusual happening."

You can read the entire article here.

This has to qualify as one of the most bizarre ways to get back in touch with one of your Seminary friends -- finding a news headline about (a) your friend's church clear across the pond, in which (b) the choirmaster is a having an affair with a woman in the congregation, and (c) the choirmaster gets attacked by the husband of that woman during the worship service in front of the entire congregation!

After reading this, I didn't know whether to cry or wind my watch (HT: Mike Lange).

It's hard not to find this humorous...until you realize how utterly tragic the whole affair must have been.